


The Hat Thief

by Halfmoon95



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 21:45:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2597525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halfmoon95/pseuds/Halfmoon95
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three times Shepard stole Joker's hat. First she found his heart. Then she broke it. And the third time she put it back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hat Thief

**Author's Note:**

> My first ever Shoker fic! Also appears on my tumblr, will be multiple chapters but so far I only have the first written.

Jane Shepard knows absolutely nothing about tech. Living in the slums back on Earth, she never had a reason to learn. She knows how to fight. She knows how to twist a man’s arm so painfully that it’s on the very brink of being dislodged from its socket. She knows a thousand places to cut people that will hurt like hell but never bleed enough to kill someone.

She knows violence like the back of her hand.

Life in a gang isn’t something she’s proud of. She hates walking through the streets and seeing people flinch away, seeing mothers pull their children back and dogs bark with their tails between their legs like she’s some kind of monster.

"I didn’t choose this!" She wants to scream at them. "I’m fucking sixteen and my parents are dead, what was I supposed to do?" She tried orphanages that didn’t work and foster homes that sent her back until finally she gave up, taking to the streets. The Nighthawks found her then, a gang that was, at the time, just getting its start and eager for new members. She worked her way through the ranks, not quite second-in-command by the time she was seventeen but close enough.

Scythe - not his real name, just a crude title he gave himself - called her his personal attack dog. He’d pick the target, he’d tell her how he wanted it to happen, and she would take care of them. It didn’t matter if it was extortion, interrogation, or simply sending a message.

Shepard did it all.

Until one day in mid-April when they brought her a thirteen year old boy and told her to kill him. She still remembers that night, walking away from Scythe with a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach and the knowledge that if she didn’t run and run far she would be killed.

And that was when she stumbled upon an Alliance recruiting station. The Alliance. Space. Didn’t get much farther than that. So she signed up, lied about her age, handed over the fake ID she had and got herself on the next flight out of there.

Jane Amelia Shepard. A soldier.

Well, tech specialist. She’d told the recruiter right off the bat that fighting wasn’t in her repertoire. It is, and she thinks he could tell, but this is her chance. Her new start. Her moment to get _away_ from all the blood on her hands.

"Attention passengers," a computerized voice announces from the speakers above her head. "We are departing for the Alliance Technological and Flight Academy in three point four minutes. Our estimated time of arrival is set at twelve hours, thirty eight minutes. Please enjoy your flight."

Shepard looks at the people around her, most of them burly looking men and muscular women with military hair cuts and tattoos. She pulls her shoulder length, mouse brown hair into a low ponytail, tugs her leather jacket a little tight around herself, and curls against the window. The odds of her getting any sleep in the little metal box are slim to none, but she shuts her eyes anyway and waits for morning.

#

Flight school isn’t what Jeff Moreau expects.

He’s not expecting to be stuck with a bunch of fighter jocks who don’t know their way around a warship’s cockpit.

He’s not expecting his instructor to be a woman with a sense of humor that would make tellers-of-dad-jokes everywhere proud.

He _sure as hell_ isn’t expecting to have to babysit a “tech specialist” with no training and no skill.

Each potential pilot is assigned their own tech specialist, a trainee who manages shields and guns during an in-flight battle. Considering every Dick, Jane, and Harry in the class already has a significant amount of training and are already partnered up, Jeff and Shepard are stuck with each other.

Jeff sits in his chair, watching the rest of the teams file out of the room until he can get up without completely embarrassing himself. Jane gets up and slowly makes her way to him, weaving through the throngs of raucous students with a sort of feline grace that isn’t typically seen with soldiers, and especially not with techies.

"Jeff," she says, holding out her hand when she reaches him. "I’m Jane, you’re tech specialist." Jeff gives her the once over. She’s well-built, although not in a masculine way. Her hands look calloused, there’s a knife strapped to her belt, and she’s sporting a leather jacket.

“Yeah, uh-huh, and just how much experience with flight technology do you have?” He catches the barely discernible flush begin to creep across her cheeks. “That’s what I thought. Let’s get one thing straight. This isn’t amateur hour. The last thing I need on my ship is a trigger happy grunt who couldn’t work a light switch. Thanks, but no thanks.” He struggles to get to his feet and ends up knocking one of his crutches over in the process. “Crap.”

Jane looks from him to the crutch for a moment before bending over and retrieving it, handing it to him wordlessly. He accepts it from her and rubs his jaw awkwardly. “Uh, thanks.”

She nods, looking down at her shoes, which he notes are black combat boots. “Look, I know I’m not the greatest person to be partnered with,” she begins, tone low. “But I’m going to work my ass off to be the best damn technician you’ve ever seen.” She walks away after that, and he follows her at his hobbling pace, watching with surprise when instead of turning to the dorms she heads for the library. Jeff suddenly feels a lot guiltier for what he said, the feeling settling low in the pit of his stomach, but he brushes it aside.

"She’ll earn my guilt when he proves herself," he mutters, and he heads off to the flight simulators.

#

To Shepard’s credit, she keeps her word.

Jeff shakes his head when he climbs out of the simulator to see her already surrounded by classmates asking questions, shaking her hand, inviting her out to dinner, things like that.

"Hell of a transformation," he mutters, grabbing his crutches and hobbling away from the sims in the direction of the dorm.

There’s something about her. Something about the way she carries herself, the way she _commands_ herself that draws people in. Only two weeks into the class and she’s easily topped the leaderboards for tech students and also acquired a horde of followers and she walks around with her stupid smirk that somehow made everyone love her more even though it’s exactly what his mother would call a “shit-eating grin”.

Jeff sees right through it. He sees what happens when everyone disperses, the way she deflates. He hears her jaw clench over their comms during battle sims and he sees the way she practically shakes with frustration when she makes a mistake.

He sees what no one else sees because when everyone looks away, he’s still watching.

Jane Shepard has a past. Something she’s not proud of. Something that even scares her. And he desperately wants to know what it is.

"Hey, Joker!"

Jeff rolls his eyes at the stupid nickname his flight instructor gave him before glancing over his shoulder.

_Great._

Todd Collins, Frederick Merley, and Grant Barringer are making their way towards him.

"What’s up, guys?" he calls.

Grant cracks his knuckles. “You want to tell us how a cripple outscored us on the assessments today?”

"Because flying requires more than the ability to smash beer cans with your face?" Jeff relies immediately. _Why do I speak?_

"You may be right, Joker," Todd agrees. "But that’s an ability you don’t have."

"I’d say you were fucking the instructor," Grant adds, "But she’d break you in half."

"Yeah, whatever," Jeff mutters. "We’ll see who’s laughing at graduation when I’m flying an Alliance dreadnought and you’re cleaning bathrooms on the Citadel."

Frederick grabs him by the collar, tugging Jeff forward so quickly he just barely manages to stay on his feet without snapping a shin. "You’ve got quite the mouth on you, Moreau," he snarls. "It might do you some good to remember how easily I can break it."

"Hey!" A voice barks from behind them. "Back off, assholes!"

Jeff glances over the other man’s shoulder and sees Shepard standing there, in all her leather jacket glory, hands on her fists.

"This isn’t your problem, Shepard," Grant says. "We’re just teaching Joker here some manners."

"My partner, my problem," she replies. "Let him go."

"Walk away, Shepard," Todd tells her. "We’ll make sure he’s still in class tomorrow."

She’s on him before Jeff can even blink, and by the time he’s registered what’s happening she has Todd’s arm wrenched behind his back, applying pressure until he’s forced to kneel on the ground to keep his shoulder in place.

"Fred, let him go," she orders. "Don’t make me ask again."

They release him so quickly he almost falls over again, and Shepard lets Todd back on his feet.

"Let’s get one thing straight," she says quietly. "Joker’s my partner. And yeah, he can be a dick, but my career depends on him not having broken bones, and not screwing everything up. So until we graduate he’s off limits. We clear?”

Grant glares at both of them. “Yeah. Whatever.”

Jeff watches them walk away with narrowed eyes. “I didn’t need your help,” he snaps when they’re out of earshot.

"You're welcome,” Shepard says with a laugh. “Come on, Joker, lighten up a little.”

"Don’t call me that."

Shepard raises an eyebrow. They stand there looking at each other for a long time, each sizing the other up.

"You hungry?" she finally asks, catching him by surprise.

He opens his mouth to say no and is interrupted by his stomach growling loudly. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

She nods. “Come on. Dinner’s on me.”

She leads the way to a taxi stand and they lean against the railings while they wait. When the shuttle arrives, Shepard wordlessly helps him in before sliding in after him. They decide on an Earth-style restaurant not to far from campus and find themselves a table in the back corner.

"Alright," she says after the waitress has taken their orders, clasping her hands on top of the table. "What’s going on with you?"

"Nothing," Joker says immediately.

She shakes her head, chuckling a little. “Come on, Jeff, don’t lie to me.”

"How do you know I’m lying?"

She eyes him seriously. “I know people,” She finally says. “Can read ‘em like books.”

"Oh yeah?" Joker asks, taking a sip of his Coke, one of the few Earth drinks to actually make it into space. "How’d you get that skill?"

Her eyes turn down to the table at this, and one of her hands fiddles absently with the zipper on her jacket. “Used to be a job requirement.”

He frowns. “What’s your story, Shepard?”

"Story?"

"Yeah, backstory. Where are you from and how the hell did you end up out here?" Jeff points at her accusingly. "I saw the way you took down Todd. You didn’t even have to think about it, you just moved. You obviously have experience. So why are you out here in the middle of nowhere training for a tech job?"

"You really want to know?" He nods and she sighs. "Alright, fine. But I’ll only show you mine if you show me yours."

He almost chokes on his drink at that. “Maybe not the best phrase, Shep.”

She grins, but after a moment her expression turns serious again. “I grew up on Earth, streets of Chicago, the good ol’ crap hole.”

"Family?"

She shakes her head. “Not in the picture. Orphan. Bounced around from home to home for a while before deciding I would try to make it on my own. Lived on the street for a month until I got picked up by a gang. The Nighthawks. Real tough crew.” She pauses to take a sip of her glass of water, stirring the ice around with the tip of her finger. “I was pretty well known, back there. Sort of an attack dog for the boss. He needed someone tortured I was the one for the job.”

His eyes go wide for a moment and her eyes instantly flick to the movement but she doesn’t comment.

"When I was seventeen I left."

"Why?"

"They finally asked me to do something I didn’t want to do. I ran for it. Knew if I wanted to keep my skin I had to get as far away from them as possible. I figured, hell, doesn’t get much farther than space, right?" She falls silent as the waitress sets down their food, two burgers and a heaping plate of fries between them.

"So you joined the Alliance," Jeff says once she’s gone, filling in the gaps. "But why the tech job?"

Shepard shrugs, squirting some ketchup onto her plate and dipping a fry in it. “I was sick of all the violence,” she says between bites. “Whenever I was hurting someone I felt like I was losing part of myself too, y’know? I wanted to get away from that. Still do. Figured a tech specialist wasn’t going to see much action, and even if I do, it’ll be shooting down ships with you, not cutting people up or mowing them down with an assault rifle.”

He watches her for a long time, and after a while she looks up and meets his gaze. “My turn?” he asks, and she smiles a little. “Well, you’re not a complete idiot, so you’ve probably noticed the crutches.” She laughs at this, and he finds himself wanting to hear the sound again. “Vrolik’s Syndrome. Brittle-bone disease. Too much pressure and I snap into little pieces. It’s all very dramatic.”

"Sounds like fun," she agrees, but her smile is more sympathetic than amused.

"Yeah, it’s really not," he laughs. "But you play the cards you’re dealt, right?"

"So why does the kid with brittle bones choose to be a pilot?"

He looks out the window for a moment, watching the rain beat down against the pavement. “Because flying doesn’t need brawn, or fighting, or things that can snap my shins. Flying needs finesse. It needs speed and thinking and strategy.” He turns to look her in the eye, her’s an impossibly bright shade of green. “Flying is something I can do, and it’s something I can do just as well as anyone else.”

They look into each other’s eyes for a long time, both seeing things beneath the surface they hadn’t payed attention to before. And then Shepard reaches across the table and snags the hat off of his head, placing it on top of her own with an illuminating smile that took his breath away.

"You’re alright, Joker."

He laughs along with her, reaching across to straighten the cap so it wasn’t lopsided on her head.

And he realizes the nickname doesn’t sound so bad coming from her.


End file.
